


I'm Gonna Miss You When You're Gone

by mariathepenguin



Series: Both of us together [1]
Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariathepenguin/pseuds/mariathepenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beca doesn't realize how much she's going to miss Chloe until she's almost gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Gonna Miss You When You're Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a one shot but I think I’m going to have to make it part of a series.

Chloe calls Beca two days before she has to leave for New York.

‘Hey, Beca.’ Beca pauses the music that’s blaring out of her laptop speaker.

‘Heyyy,’ she drawls. ‘How’s the packing going?’

‘Not great,’ Chloe says. She sounds out of breath. ‘I left packing up way too late. There’s stuff _everywhere_.’

‘So...’

‘I need you to do me a huge favour and help me,’ Chloe says.

‘That... sounds kind of terrible.’

‘I know. My room is driving me crazy.’

‘You’re not doing a great job of selling this to me, Chloe.’ Beca hears Chloe huff down the phone and she smiles as she turns her laptop off.

‘Just come and keep me company. I’ll do all the heavy lifting.’

‘I’ll be over in a little bit.’

‘You’re the best,’ Chloe says. Beca smirks.

‘Yeah, I know.’

 

*

 

Chloe buzzes her into the building almost as soon as Beca presses the button, and the front door opens a few seconds after she knocks.

‘Beca,’ Chloe says happily, and Beca feels a low, pleasant pulse in her stomach at the way her name sounds in Chloe’s mouth. Chloe wraps a hand around Beca’s and tugs her through the tiny living room to her room.

Chloe’s room is a complete mess. It looks kind of like an angry giant picked it up and shook it around.

‘Chloe...’

‘I forgot how much stuff I had,’ Chloe says forlornly. ‘And we have that Bella thing tomorrow.’

Crap. Beca completely forgot about that.

Chloe must see something in her face because she frowns and gives their joined hands a little shake.

‘Beca,’ Chloe says. ‘Aubrey will kill you if you don’t show up. You’re the Captain now.’

‘Yeah, no, I know,’ she says. ‘I’ll be there.’

Chloe smiles and squeezes her fingers before she lets go of Beca’s hand, and Beca takes a cautious look around before she finds a square foot of space that’s actually bare. She takes an ungainly leap to the bare spot and scowls as Chloe giggles behind her.

‘Shut up,’ she mumbles. Chloe hops nimbly next to her and directs her to the bed.

‘Okay, so you sit there, and just fold the stuff on the bed.’ Beca raises her eyebrow.

‘I thought I was here for moral support.’

‘Sure, and folding.’ Chloe is already turning around to pull some knick-knacks off the shelf, so Beca slouches to the bed and starts to try to fold as neatly as she can.

 

*

 

 Beca puts the last, terribly folded, shirt onto the pile.

‘Okay, I’m done.’

Chloe glances over from where she’s stacking books into boxes.

‘Thanks, Beca,’ she says. Chloe has managed to do a decent amount of packing in the time it took Beca to clear up the bed, and Beca wonders how much she’s actually being helpful, considering all she’s done is make a few small piles of clothes.

But Chloe walks over and sits down next to her on the bed and smiles and it’s hard to regret how she’s spent last half hour.

‘I’m really gonna miss you,’ Beca says, and she feels her face heat up almost immediately. Chloe’s face moves from happy to kind of pleased and sad at the same time, and she reaches over and holds Beca’s hand.

‘I’m going to miss you more,’ Chloe says. The blush on Beca’s face flares hot again and all of a sudden it’s too much. Chloe’s closeness and her sweet-smelling perfume and her unafraid openness that makes _Beca_ feel vulnerable, and she smiles awkwardly before she pulls her hand out of Chloe’s.

‘I’ll start sealing the boxes,’ Beca says. She stands up and reaches for the roll of tape on the desk.

‘Sure,’ Chloe says. ‘Hey, will you pass me your iPod?’

 

*

 

The music that blasts out of Chloe’s iPod dock makes it hard for both of them to focus, and soon Chloe is bopping around the room and dancing around like she’s in a club. Beca doesn’t really dance outside of official Bellas choreography, but Chloe pulls her up anyway and they do a messy 2-step that Chloe leads her through with one hand on her waist and the other gripping hers.

Chloe is strong, and she cradles Beca to her with a gentle but firm hold that makes her knees knock together. Beca tips her head down so she doesn’t have to look at Chloe’s face (she’s positive she’s blushing right now) and her eyes fall on the splash of freckles dotted over Chloe’s collarbone.

The song changes to No Diggity and Chloe lets go of her to giggle. Her eyes meet Beca’s and she grins like she expects Beca to be laughing along with her, but Beca is still reeling from the feel of Chloe’s hands settling around her and she can barely breathe.

‘Beca?’

It’s strange, how an easily-ignored vague attraction that buzzed in the back of her mind for close to a year can suddenly fly to the front of her mind and pretty much drown her.

‘You’re being really weird.’

Maybe it’s because it’s finally starting to hit her that Chloe’s leaving, that she’s not going to be able to run into her in the library or the coffee shop, or grab lunch with her before Bellas’ rehearsal. Maybe it’s some kind of desperate attempt to hold on to their friendship.

Chloe runs a worried hand down Beca’s cheek, and she fights the urge to lean into it.

Or maybe not.

‘I’m just... reliving the riff off,’ she says. That rap really wasn’t my best work.’

‘It was cute,’ Chloe says. She looks relieved now that Beca seems to have snapped out of whatever weird trance she was in. ‘You were _aca_ -awesome,’ she adds.

‘Don’t,’ Beca groans. Chloe laughs, and Beca breathes.

 

*

 

‘Tell me about your dad,’ Chloe says.

They are sitting side by side on Chloe’s couch, a bottle of wine propped precariously between them and a pizza box slipping off the end.

‘Why?’

Chloe shrugs.

The wine that they’ve already drunk has softened Beca enough that she tips her head to the side and gives Chloe a lazy smile.

‘You trying to get information out of me in my compromised state?’

‘I just like knowing things about you,’ Chloe says. ‘You’re kind of a closed book.’

‘Not with you,’ Beca says, before she can catch herself. Damn the wine.

Chloe doesn’t say anything; she just fixes Beca with those ridiculously huge blue eyes of hers and words fall out of her before she can catch them.

‘He was great. Good. He was a good dad. He loved me. Loves me,’ she amends. ‘I guess he just wanted something different.’

Chloe’s eyes are wide and sympathetic in a way that would annoy her on anyone else.

‘Beca-’

‘It’s okay,’ she interrupts. ‘I have a good mom. And I think I turned out okay.’

‘You did,’ Chloe says, softly, like she’s afraid the words might break in her mouth. Beca looks away and takes another swig of wine. It burns all the way down to her stomach and she curls her fingers around the neck of the bottle.

Chloe’s hands reach out and cover hers, and Beca closes her eyes.

‘How did you get to be friends with Aubrey,’ she says eventually, because she doesn’t want to be thinking about her life anymore. Chloe stares at her for another second before she lets Beca go and leans back against the couch.

‘We were on the same floor, in freshman year, and one day her roommate locked her out because she’d brought a boy home. So I told her she could stay with me for the night.’

‘Just like that? Had you even talked to her before?’

‘Not really. But I liked her, even before I talked to her.’

‘And then you joined the Bellas together,’ Beca finishes. Chloe nods.

‘She found my sheet music and we practised together every day before the auditions. And, well...’ Beca remembers the pictures that Chloe still hasn’t taken down from her bulletin board. There are pictures of Chloe and her family and friends from home, a couple of pictures of the Bellas and lots of pictures of Chloe and Aubrey. Aubrey is smiling and laughing and generally looking happier than Beca has ever seen her. It reminds her that Aubrey-with-Chloe is different from Aubrey with anyone else.

‘She’s my best friend,’ Chloe adds, unnecessarily, and Beca feels an irrational tug of jealousy in her chest.

The thing they’ve been building up to for a while- since Beca came over, or since she joined the Bellas, or maybe when Chloe barged into her shower stall all those months ago- crowds out every other thought and Beca moves closer, bracing herself with a hand on the other side of Chloe. Chloe cuts out in the middle of whatever she was about to say and she just looks at Beca, waiting to see what she is going to do.

‘Just- can I-’ Beca’s eyes flick to Chloe’s lips and Chloe swallows for a second before she nods, shifting forward so she can lean closer. Their noses bump together, and Chloe pauses.

‘Jesse,’ she whispers, her lips just barely tickling Beca’s, and Beca pauses. She is too drunk- on the wine, on Chloe’s warmth and the maddening closeness of her lips- to be able to explain how she and Jesse just kind of fizzled out. She shakes her head instead, and Chloe exhales shakily before clearing the last couple of inches and pressing their lips together.

Chloe’s kisses are soft and gentle, yielding the pace to Beca, and she pulls Chloe closer so she can slide a hand around her neck and hold her close. They kiss longer and deeper and Beca lets her hand wander down Chloe’s neck, lingering to enjoy the little shivers that wrack her body before she slides down to rub her hand down the sides of her ribs.

Chloe moves suddenly, pressing Beca against the couch and trailing her mouth down to Beca’s neck. The air slips out of her lungs and she gasps, but Chloe’s teeth nip at her neck and all she can do is try not to moan too loud.

After a while (a minute, an hour, maybe the whole night), Beca grasps hold of Chloe’s shoulder and pulls her back up. Chloe gives her a look that makes her pull her closer. Beca leans back in to kiss her again and Chloe moves forward easily.

Beca feels wrung out and lazy, trading slow kisses and enjoying the tingling warmth that spreads across her body with every press of their lips.

Kissing a girl who’s one of her best friends feels like the best kind of wrong and dizzyingly right at the same time.

 

*

 

Beca wakes up the next morning in Chloe’s bed with a crick in her neck and a comfortable weight pressed all along her left side. She opens her eyes to find Chloe already awake, sleepy face half pressed into the pillow and eyes blearily fixed on her.

‘Chloe,’ she says, still half asleep. It turns out that she doesn’t have anything to say after that and she lets her eyes droop shut again.

Chloe winds an arm around Beca’s waist and pulls her closer, and Beca automatically shuffles closer. Chloe kisses her forehead, once, twice, three times. The last kiss lingers before Chloe moves away.

‘It’s late,’ Chloe says. ‘We have to go.’

She gets out of bed, and Beca shivers at the cold space she leaves behind.

 

*

 

Beca sits on Chloe’s bed and watches her panic.

‘Okay,’ Chloe says, biting her lip. ‘We need to go to Aubrey’s thing and I have to finish up and call the landlord and _crap_ , I don’t know where I left my keys-’

‘Chloe,’ she says. ‘Just, sit down for a second.’ Chloe shakes her head absently and keeps on rooting through one of the suitcases on the floor. ‘Chloe, please-’ Chloe turns around.

‘Beca, I’m _leaving_ tomorrow,’ Chloe says. She looks so sad that Beca shuts up, and after a second Chloe turns around and goes back to looking through her suitcase. Beca can see her hands shake, even from the bed.

 

*

 

Chloe is leaving tomorrow.

This sticks in Beca’s head as she goes back to her room to get ready for the Bellas’ meeting. It echoes around her mind as Chloe drives her to the restaurant (Chloe doesn’t really talk to her but her hand rests on top of Beca’s for most of the drive), and it only really gets pushed to the back of her mind when they get to the restaurant and get absorbed into the insanity that is any Bellas meeting.

There aren’t that many of them since most of the Bellas went home at the beginning of summer, but the brunch/lunch thing that Aubrey organised still stretches to most of the day. Beca sits in between Cynthia Rose and Denise and Chloe sits next to Aubrey, who is at the head of the table, of course, and it isn’t until late afternoon before she is alone with Chloe again.

Chloe is still being painfully awkward with her, but she just drives them both back to her apartment after the Bellas’ meeting is over, and they walk up the two flights of stairs in silence. Chloe’s weird roommates moved out a couple of days ago, and her apartment is uncomfortably silent. Her room is pretty much empty now, and Beca watches as she wanders around, moving stuff from one bag to another.

Barden has done an impressive job of paring away at her ability to be as detached as she would like to be, and she can only watch for another minute before she can’t take it anymore.

She wants to be angry, and she wants to tell Chloe that she can’t kiss her the way she did and then pretend like she’s not in the room, but Chloe’s hands are shaking, and she’s leaving, and she doesn’t want to Chloe to go with this grating awkwardness between them.

‘It doesn’t have to be a big deal,’ she says eventually. Chloe stops messing around with her stuff and turns around.

‘What?’ Beca shrugs uncomfortably.

‘It happens. We kissed. Big deal. Friends do that sometimes, right?’ She’s pretty sure that the look on her face doesn’t fit what she’s trying to say, but she keeps going. ‘So, can we just stop being weird?’

Chloe takes a deep breath, and another, and she walks forward until she is right in front of Beca. She reaches out and grasps Beca’s hands, tugging her up until she is standing too.

‘I don’t want to forget it,’ Chloe says. ‘I don’t, Beca.’

‘You haven’t talked to me all day today,’ Beca says. She sounds like a child and she feels like one too, but Chloe is running her thumbs across Beca’s wrists and it’s making her lose her breath all over again.

‘I know,’ Chloe says. ‘Because it’s hard, for me.’ Beca frowns.

‘What is?’ Chloe’s hands slide around her waist and clasp at the small of her back, keeping her close. It’s a surprisingly intimate hold considering they’ve really only had one makeout session but Beca leans into it anyway.

‘I’m leaving. And that’s going to be really hard.’ Chloe’s face is an interesting mix of scared and determined, and Beca reaches out and manages to get an arm around her, too. It doesn’t do anything to lessen the intimacy of the whole set up but it steadies her.

‘I’m trying really hard to not be scared about moving by myself, but it’s not really working. And it just gets harder if I start to think about everyone I love that I won’t get to see every day. It kind of makes me not want to go. Which is crazy,’ Chloe says. She smiles a little and Beca smiles back.

‘Grad school’s a pretty big deal.’

‘I know,’ Chloe says. ‘The thing is, thinking about you makes me not want to go even more. It makes me want to unpack everything and not leave.’ The way Chloe says it- calm and measured like this is a long known fact instead of a revelation for Beca- makes her arm curl tighter around Chloe.

‘Chloe-’ feelings and words have never meshed well for Beca and right now is no exception.

‘But I don’t want you to go tonight.’ Beca hesitates for a second before she nods,. Chloe’s hands move up her back and pull her close enough to kiss, and Beca falls into it, gratefully.

 Chloe nudges Beca backward until the backs of her knees hit the bed. All of this should feel uncomfortable, because they’ve just managed to nudge themselves out of being just friends but they haven’t settled anywhere else. But Chloe has always been able to make Beca comfortable even when she really shouldn’t be, and Beca can’t feel anything other than a low, swooping warmth in her chest as Chloe settles her lips over hers and presses her gently down onto the bed.

 

*

 

The next morning, Beca helps Chloe load up the stuff that she hasn’t just put into storage into her Mini. When everything’s been packed away Chloe gives her a hug that hurts her

(ribs, heart)

And she stands on the edge of the curb and watches Chloe get into her car.

‘I’ll call you when I get there,’ Chloe says.

‘Call me when you cross the first state line,’ Beca replies. Chloe gives her a mock salute.

‘I will.’

And really, there isn’t much more to say. Beca steps forward and only hesitates for a second before she sticks her head through the window and gives Chloe a kiss. The angle is awkward but she ignores the strain in her neck and tangles her free hand in Chloe’s hair. Eventually, Chloe pulls away.

‘Beca,’ she says. ‘I really have to go.’ Beca steps back, onto the curb.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she says.

‘I’ll miss you more,’ Chloe replies. She gives Beca a smile that only barely makes it to her eyes and the car starts to pull away. Beca fights the urge to follow after the car and she just waves, instead. An arm sticks out of the window and waves back. After a while Chloe pulls her arm back in and the car speeds up. It turns a corner and Chloe is out of sight.

And Beca breathes.


End file.
